Cheapest (most unfair) arcade game

[SPM]

I've just played a bit of Ghost 'n' Goblins from the Capcom Arcade Stadium and, while I like it much more than the NES version, it still has many annoyingly cheap deaths if you don't know what you're doing.

I enjoy really difficult to survive sections, but impossible to survive the first time without luck not so much. Which is kind of ironic since many shmups fall into this category and I love them... I guess it depends on the way it's handled.

So... What's the cheapest arcade game for you? that one full of gotcha moments that infuriates you the most.

[BIL]

While it's among my favourite games full-stop, Saigo no Nindou aka Ninja Spirit has probably the most atrociously unfair cheap shot you will ever see in a first-rate Japanese arcade title. I implore all reading this - use that guide, if you ever intend to play it. It's thirty seconds of arrant kusoge in an otherwise 11/10 sidescroller, and it's also utterly trivial compared to the roiling chaos surrounding it.

Otherwise, lots of scattered things come to mind... Ikari's endgame stretch is pretty much unsurvivable, without very careful advance knowledge of its rocket beacons. Again, I heartily suggest using my (not nearly as painstaking) guidance - just like Saigo, the wider game is a hell of a lot better AND tougher than the lame rote.

I was recently discussing Castlevania (1986) with a friend, and pointed out its all but rote sixth stage (bats, eagles, Simon can't do shit about either), as well as the two examples above, as illustrating a particular short-sightedness. They're ultimately trivial rote brickwalls, adding little of value in the long term. In the short term, though, they'll rifle your credits ruthlessly (let's go with 1987's VS Castlevania, on that point ).

Which is the whole idea, I'm sure. That's the business model - whoop the player's ass off the machine, keep 'em coming back for more. However, there's a vast gulf between taking a beating from a tough game, gradually learning its ins and outs, and getting brickwalled by a rote memory test that's impossible blind, trivial rehearsed.

The more an action game drifts from the first pole to the latter, the less I'm going to like it. Haunted Castle is pretty much all rote. I actually enjoy it, in a heavily caveated sense - there's a decent stamina aspect, since even trivial bumps will cost you subweapon ammo, potentially lethal in the longer term. Aside from some precision bat-swatting in the loop, though, it's little more than one of those carnival "don't touch the wire" games.

And that is a fucking disgrace.

[Marc]

After another evening spent with it, I want to scream GHOULS N GHOSTS, thrown down my mic, and storm off in a strop, but I'd get piled on so I won't do that

I'd say bullshit like Double Dragon 3 or one of the Combat Tribes ROMs where your energy ticks down regardless of your performance would be the worst examples.

[Blinge]

I was recently discussing Castlevania (1986) with a friend, and pointed out its all but rote sixth stage (bats, eagles, Simon can't do shit about either), as well as the two examples above, as illustrating a particular short-sightedness. They're ultimately trivial rote brickwalls, adding little of value in the long term. In the short term, though, they'll rifle your credits ruthlessly (let's go with 1987's VS Castlevania, on that point ).

urgh fuck that section! It's the one thing that makes me despair to replay the game tbh, i don't have it memorised.

It's a fake section, it's not made from plants, it's made from chemicals!!

[BIL]

1337 Stratz: ENSURE you are holding [up/left] from the map screen, all the way through Simon climbing the stairs, and beyond if possible (try to go right to the end of the ledge). This'll get you lucky RNG on the first couple Big Battyboys every time, and then you'll have the Stopwatch which can halt the rest's bullshit.

If you fail to do this, god help you. Ideally, I'd have made the bats easier to kill (three hits max), but the terrain more treacherous, so you'd have to weigh up killing them or hustling onward. This would also make subweapons that are not the Stopwatch viable (my god, CV1 st6 is pretty much a microcosm of Haunted Castle).

As it is, you realistically can't kill them (not without risking ruinous, utterly pointless damage) - so a static route that prioritises hauling ass is the only choice.

It's a fake section, it's not made from plants, it's made from chemicals!!

Indeed, st6 is about as germane to CV's twitch/method action, as medicinal herbs are to nightmarishly potent rave drugs from the former Soviet bloc. It'll make your arms go all blooty, like a bloody piano dentist!

[jepjepjep]

I'd have to say that Ghosts'n Goblins is up there. But the "cheap" deaths are part of what makes the game so fun. In fact, this thread reminded me of an interview with Fujiwara that really drives this point home:

I conducted location testing in arcades. If the players that tried the game tended not to get stuck at a certain point, I’d have to hurry back to the company and redo that portion. I couldn’t let them get by so easily. There are tricks you can use to avoid dying, right? Once I figured out what they were, I’d quickly thwart players who attempted to use them. You’ll have to forgive me. [laughs]

But even though the game is full of these unfair moments, there is still a high degree of improvisation that makes the game a lot of fun to play, even after you've "mastered" it. The same is true of Saigo.

[Vludi]

Go play Tower of Druaga.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Try playing the arcade game of Ivan Stewart's Super Off Road racing game courtesy of Leland Corporation where it costs real money just to upgrade your vehicle's nitro boosts to the max amongst maxing out all major upgades as well.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[xorthen]

Almost all arcade games from back then are broken and unfair.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Almost all arcade games from back then are broken and unfair.

From back when, though? Arcade games evolved rather significantly from their infancy through the 90s, and then in the 2000s. This strikes me as a massive generalization, the kind of misperception that arcade games are basically all ruthless and unfair quarter munchers. It's true that a lot were, but the reality is plenty were difficult, but realistically doable on one credit, and that's something that's criminally unrecognized within the mainstream.

Konami had a habit of making its North American releases more quarter-munchy than its Asian/Japanese versions. X-Men Arcade didn't let you use your special attack icons until your health was basically empty, with special attacks first draining health (whereas it more sensibly uses the icons first in the JP ver). Metamorphic Force is probably their most egregious example, with the European version changing the traditional lifebar to a drain health over time thing that made it far harder, and the US version adding a very nasty boss rush to the proceedings (the music's great though) with basically nothing in the way of health refills. Konami did also have games where the meddling for the North American release was minimal and the overseas releases weren't entirely silly. Moo Mesa on the US defaults isn't much harder, and I seem to remember GI Joe is similarly balanced.

[CIT]

Kaiser Knuckle

I don’t think anybody’s actually 1cc‘d it with a character other than Wulong.

[pegboy]

What, if any, arcade games are literally impossible to 1cc?

[trap15]

Mostly western made garbage like Revolution X and such. There's very few if any impossible Japanese-developed games.

[BIL]

^^^ was just going to mention the RX-adjacent T2: The Arcade Game. Sometimes I'll get nostalgic (early 90s, my kryptonite ) and look for a Youtube 1CC, just to enjoy the production value. Never found anything but credit-fed or cheated runs. Sometimes credit-fed cheated runs.

I'm never quite willing to say die - some Unabomber motherfucker out in the woods with a generator may be slamming down NMNBs as I type, between watching Maury and perfecting his Survival Wrist (or even while doing so ) - but it does look like genuine bullshit.

[SuperDeadite]

Guerrilla War. Get shot from off screen enemies. Must know where they are before you get there or you fucked. Japanese rank it as "demon tier" for a reason lol.

[BIL]

GW/Guevara is a bitch and a half, yep. Even if you survive to the final boss, you may well run out of grenades and be SOL. Or kill it too slowly, and get blown up by timeout shells during the ending sequence. Resident Evil's notorious endgame self-destruct timers have nothing on that.

Shame is, it's almost entirely down to that fucking horizontal camera pan. The final two stages are technically harder than the first three, but nowhere nearly as trial/error based, since they barely pan at all. Ikari and Dogo are so well-designed around their deliberate movement and omniscient POV... if you told me Obada bailed out for the final game, I'd believe it.

Still love it though, despite the obnoxious crust of trial/error. The way swathes of stage break open as you learn to keep powerups and tanks is supremely gratifying. Domino cascades of methodical carnage (holy fuck though, I hate how crummy the grenades are, compared to Ikari/Dogo's monstrous REDSPLOSIONS - admittedly, the peashooter grew some balls). I didn't find the 1CC too much harder than Ikari/Dogo's, but I had to postpone my 1LC attempts, a few months back. Even memorised front-to-back, it's wickedly harder to pull off than the already tough previous games'. It's a short run, at least.

[Rastan78]

Kaiser Knuckle

I don’t think anybody’s actually 1cc‘d it with a character other than Wulong.

As soon as I saw the thread I was thinking this too. Insanely cheap game. Here's a vid of Justin Wong trying to come to grips with the arcade mode:

https://youtu.be/sRLlh9-gKRw

Doesn't even show the last boss General though. Don't even want to think about fighting him. A lot of these older fighting games you have to fight cheap with cheap and find a weakness in the AI you can exploit over and over. Trying to fight intelligently as you would a human player will just reveal how brutal the input reading of the CPU is.

[BIL]

I'm up way too late, I mixed up Kaiser Knuckle with Knuckle Bash. gameoverDude posted once that the designers responsible for General got fired - dunno the source, but that's too funny/tragic to forget.

[Rastan78]

Lol that's pretty wild if true. I heard there was another rom whether a prototype or full release that nerfed General but don't quote me on that.

I do love the beautiful Taito F3 graphics on this game. The backgrounds are full of charming little details. As a kid I was suspicious of all the B-tier SF clones like Fighter's History, Breakers, World Heroes etc. All I really cared about was SF2, Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown II and looked down my nose a bit at some of these. In hindsight though, they're all really cool. Lots of chunky detailed sprite work and over the top wacky character designs throughout. Aside from their derivative movesets and cheap as fuck final bosses there's a lot to love. Some of these also-ran SF clones make today's fighting games look bland by comparison.

[Rastan78]

this has the honorable and brave Mikado crew trying to fight off a very famous kusoge difficulty level last boss.

https://youtu.be/_MuBH2oZRZU

Watching a couple of minutes of the pros at Mikado getting destroyed by General should give an idea of just how cheap he really is. That fucking slide that is super fast and can't be punished, combined with the fact that he seems to be able to do it on reaction like the frame after you hit a button lol. His walk speed, throw range everything about him is just a total joke. As rare as truly "unfair" design might be in Japanese arcade games from major devs like Taito this is a pretty good example.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The forum's own Dumple has been on a quest to 1CC as many arcade games as possible. It's a very impressive list, he might be able to shed some light on what games are extremely bullshit.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmKaU3 ... EBX2q5pxNQ

What, if any, arcade games are literally impossible to 1cc?

There's probably a few, but it depends on how we categorize "impossible":

• Modes that are "endless" such as the secret mode in Aqua Rush doesn't count. Same goes for infinite looping games, clearing the first loop is sufficient to qualify as 1CC doable. Games with a killscreen I guess count as a 1CC.

• Do we consider games that are bullshit from a human standpoint but where a 1cc is technically possible with tool-assistance? Or only games that are truly impossible to 1cc (whether intentionally or due to a bug) even with tool assistance? There's some ridiculous stuff out there like DOJ WL that's been 2-ALL'd that would look impossible to the average person, so it may be we might assess something as impossible simply because it's insanely hard and hasn't been 1CC'd yet.

[Rastan78]

While the overall difficulty of the CPU in the SF2 series was pretty manageable (except for ST which could be a real bastard) Capcom was not above using some ultra cheap quarter muncher design decisions to add difficulty to the game. This video by desk shows how certain attacks were granted invincibility or unblockable characteristics only when used by the CPU. The worst was having 3/4 life remaining and getting choked out by a single grab even when you're mashing for your life lol.

https://youtu.be/laUAgEUunsI

What do you guys think about game like Smash TV where while the game can technically be cleared with 1CC it doesn't quite feel like that was what the devs had in mind? Score is saved on continue, luck with weapon powerup drops might be necessary for a clear, enemy wave design is kind of based more on reacting to endless enemy spam than pattern memorization/route creation etc. It's not so much a matter of is the 1CC technically possible, but does the design really reward the player for attempting it?

I haven't put much time into games like this or Total Carnage so I may stand to be corrected. Maybe I just didn't give them a fair shake?

[BIL]

I was enjoying BBH's Total Carnage 1CC just the other day (he's since uploaded another). It looks like it works fine as a one-credit scoring game, but at the same time, yep, credit-feeders can buy their way to the top.

Total Carnage is not a game that encourages 1-credit play, due to the fact that you get to keep your score when you continue. The game makes no effort to differentiate scores or admonish players who use continues. This is no way the highest score possible - back in the day I saw a machine that had a high score of over a million. But how many continues they used to do that, I'll never know. The only other person I know of that's also managed to clear this game on one credit is Zerstorung, who also uploaded his replay to MARP.

I guess, on principle, I'd rather have a viable scoring game that relies on an honour system, than one that can't be played for score at all. Not ideal though. Slap a nice big "CNT" on 'em, that's what I say.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The western-made Gauntlet games probably qualify; because of the health draining over time thing and the bosses with apparently unavoidable attacks, I'm pretty convinced they're not humanly 1CCable. They were designed with the intention to dump credits in to raise your health midgame. The Genesis version's Quest Mode as well as the N64 port both turn the game into true RPGs, where the health drain over time is disabled (either with a findable ring or by default) and with a town you can escape to where you can heal back to full health, and are much better off for it.

[BIL]

I'm not as familiar with Western arcade stuff, but Zerst mentioned Gauntlet 1CCs being a known thing BITD (that's a really good thread, I've bookmarked it for recommendation to Other Gaming at some point).

The MD's Quest mode is very cool, has an almost Zelda-ish aspect. Considerable lateral thinking needed to navigate those towers/dungeons. Utterly killer Sakimoto/Iwata tunes, too. M2's pro debut, incidentally - started out as their fanmade X68000 port, before they sold it to Tengen. Lots of STG cred in that cart, haha.

[pegboy]

Does Inbachi count as impossible? Been like 9 years and AFAIK it still hasn't happened.

Also, what about Mushi Futari Ultra 1.0? I've never seen a clear of the true arcade version, only the "1.01" xbox 360 version that has changes (more bombs I believe).

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Interesting, didn't know Gauntlet had been 1CC'd. The Genesis port is for sure amazing, the soundtrack is arguably one of the best on the system in terms of instrumentation and showing off what the system could do.

Out of weird coincidence I had someone a few hours ago leave a random comment on my latest Progear video on YT complaining how unfair it is:

Is this tool assisted? I tried everything. That gimmicky scoring system makes the game harder than it needs to be. If you try to bullet cancel repeatedly you just die OVER AND OVER AND OOOOVER AGAIN! Absolute coin eater. Worst shooter from Cave.

The weird part is they've 1CC'd Darius; does the PS4 release default to non-arcade defaults or are they just not used to bullet hell games?

[To Far Away Times]

Maybe it was just a rage post. Progear is hard, but its not cheap.

And yeah, I"d like to invest some time into Gauntlet, so long as its designed with a 1CC being atainable.

[Vanguard]

The original arcade version of Gauntlet never ends so strictly speaking it can't be one credit cleared. You could arbitrarily designate some stage as the final stage and call it quits after beating that maybe. Keep looping until you've cleared every stage if you really want to be thorough about it. The NES port has a proper ending and is 1CC-able. As I recall you need a little bit of luck to get through the final world, might be possible to achieve 100% consistency as the Elf if you're really good but probably not any of the others (I still like the wizard best fwiw). The Genesis port has a nice alternate RPG mode with an ending. I don't know if its RPG design really lends itself to arcade-style play, but I'm sure you could still 1CC that too if you wanted.

[apatheticTurd]

King of the Monsters 2 in its original form is certainly up there

-Basic attack strings are not safe. Bosses can easily break out and punish you. They can be struck while they're down but some can punish you at random from their crumpled state and Aquaslug is immune.

-Most pick-ups are covered up with a ? sign, requiring you to run into the corner of their sprite to reveal them. Many of them are negative items like bombs and despawns. It is easy to accidentally pick-up or be knocked into negative power-up items.

-Grapples are entirely random and slanted in the CPU's favour.

-The final stage is a boss rush. The stage/boss ratio was already so heavily slanted toward the later you're essentially replaying the whole game except you have less ressources.

-The "mash" bonus rounds, I am certain, are impossible without autofire.

The one mitigating factor is that there are a lot of extra lifes, but even then most of them are obtained through an insanely obscure trick that requires you to be near death. Every 1cc videos of the game consists of knocking down bosses with jump kicks and timing whatever the best available charge attack is to their wakeup because everything else is unviable.

I'm also curious if there are any 1ccs of the original Fight Fight that don't rely on the infinite combo and despawning enemies with the backward jump exploits. The game has a LOT of bullshit.